Things that most Scimitar owners can and wil do. I am excluding putting Rover V8 engines in or converting to diesel. Someone, somewhere, must have a web page on outrageous Scimitar modifications
Putting later V6 engines into the earlier Scimitar
The Scimitar can be lowered at the front by a number of options, one of which involves buying more expensive dampers with adjustable spring platforms. There is a limit to how much you can lower the car by this method, and a subtle drawback - by winding the adjustable spring platform downwards you are decreasing the preload in the spring, and effectively softening the suspension slightly.
A second option involves buying damper support plates with a smaller set of triangular uprights so that the hole through which the damper bolt passes is closer to the support plate. Since the mount point is about halfway between the chassis and the stub axle, you will lower the car by more than the amount that you have lowered the damper bolt. This method does not alter the springing at all.
Option 3 again involves buying things, in this case thick washers and longer bolts. The spacer washers are inserted between the damper support plate and the wishbone, so that the damper support plate is lower than the wishbone, and the top end of the damper is also lowered. As with option 2, no change is made to the springing.
Options 2 and 3 can be combined to give a lower ride height at the front than either option alone.
Option 4 can be carried out yourself if you feel confident enough to be able to undo the lower trunnion bolts and the lower wisbone inner bolts. When combined with the other options it will give the lowest ride height achievable with standard springs and dampers. As originally fitted on the SE5 and early SE5A, the lower wishbones had the I-beam section above the centrelines of the wishbone eyes through which the bushes are fitted. To put it another way, if you look at a lower wishbone and draw an imaginary line through the centre of the bolts at either end if it, the wishbone arm itself is above this imaginary line. Inverting the wishbone so that the I-section falls below the imaginary line lowers the damper support plate in a similar way to option 3. The complications arise because the wishbones are handed, so that the front lower wishbone has to be inverted and moved to the rear position, and the rear wishbone moves to the front position.
At this point I would like to make it clear that I do not advise lowering the Scimitar more than about 1 inch at the front, particularly if you have tubular exhausts with the collector underneath the front outrigger. Driving over anything but the smoothest roads will soon beat the lowest of the three pipes to a D-section. You could of course fit stronger springs to try and limit the downwards trend, but then you get into the strange loop - stronger springs mean that the springs compress less under the initial preload, the car sits slightly higher as a result, so you cut some more spring off, which stiffens it, and stronger springs compress less ... (DC Al Capo)
Lowering the back is another matter again. It is possible to fit front shocks and springs to the rear, but then you will end up with a stiff back end that is liable to hop around on the road. OK, so fit weaker springs to soften the ride a bit, but then the car sits too low because the initial preload has been reduced, and off we go again.
The main problem is that too much of the Scimitar runs close to the ground, and modern roads are far bumpier than 30 years ago when the Scimitar was first engineered.
After two years of running lowered Scimitars for hillclimbs and sprints I finally picked LGF and AOX back up again as I became interested in road-rallies, where the car must be able to make progress over the widest possible range of roads. It's all horses for courses, but my preference is to be able to drive wherever I like without wincing and having to refit new exhausts every other week.
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The late SE5A and SE6 engine has the rear-well sump, and can be fitted into early SE5A's and SE5's with some minor fiddling. Both my first SE5A and SE5 have had a later engine fitted by myself. In each of these, I have retained the front timing cover with the dipstick tube blanked off, and run a 3-pulley alternator belt setup.
If you are going to keep the 4-pulley system you will have to change the cross-member that joins the top of the suspension towers to a later SE5A version that bows forwards to clear the top pulley.
Also, you will have to remove the tube stiffener under the engine that joins the chassis rails together because it will foul the rear-well sump.
In my SE5A I didn't bother fitting a flat plate where the tube used to go, and have never noticed any ill-effects. In the SE5 which was my sprint car and then the rally car, I fitted a cross-plate which carried the back of the sumpguard as well.
The only thing I will say is that the dipstick is in a very awkward position on the right of the engine block, and is less convenient than the front-well sump arrangement where it is easly accessible. In the SE5A there is room when the bonnet opens to look down through the gap where the bonnet opens and see the dipstick tube, but the SE5 is not so obliging.
The old sump can be used providing that you either use the old oil pump as well, or swap the long stainer pipe on the SE6A engine for the short pipe from the SE5 engine. I would suggest then that you cap off the dipstick tube along the side of the block. It might also be worth thinking about baffling the front-well sump, which is what I did on my first Scimitar after seeing the oil pressure drop to nothing first time out at Gurston Down.
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